Field of the Invention
One or more embodiments of the invention are related to the field of data processing and electronic messaging systems. More particularly, but not by way of limitation, one or more embodiments of the invention enable a system for annotation of electronic messages with contextual information, which transforms the electronic messages into annotated messages with added information related to the original message to provide a context for the electronic message to aid a recipient in utilizing the electronic message, understanding its meaning, and responding to the electronic message.
Description of the Related Art
Existing systems that enable communication of electronic messages include email, instant message, text message, calendar, and audio and video messaging systems. These systems are designed to transmit messages to a recipient, or for communications between two individuals, between a sender and a receiver. Transformations made to messages by a communication system, such as encryption or compression, are designed to be transparent to the recipient.
Recipients of messages frequently need to search manually for information related to the messages to provide context for the messages. Alternatively the sender of a message may anticipate some of the recipients' contextual information needs, and perform these searches prior to sending the message. In either case, users, such as the senders, receivers, or both, need to manually determine the contextual information needs associated with a message, perform searches for this information, and integrate the information with the message.
There are no known systems that automatically transform messages by adding relevant information for the recipients. There are no known systems that extract meaning and context from messages and use this extracted data to search for contextual information. There are no known systems that annotate messages automatically with relevant data derived from the message context.
For at least the limitations described above there is a need for a system that annotates electronic messages with contextual information to provide a context for the electronic message to aid the recipient in utilizing the electronic message, understanding its meaning, and responding to the message.